“To fuck with my head like this! To risk both our lives because you’re some fool who thinks he’s in love!”
“I’m not trying to fuck with your head and I’m not a fool. It’s how I feel. I know it’s how you feel, too.”
“Stop it! Just stop, Dell! I do not love you. Get that through your head. You’re a hell of a fine pilot and a fun fuck, but that is where it begins and ends with us.”
“I don’t believe you,” he said quietly, wounded.
“Well then you’re the one with the problem, not me,” she volleyed back as she finished lacing up her boots and stormed out of his quarters.
Except it was her problem, too, and she knew it. Even as she stalked down the corridor, she knew it. Selfish son of a bitch. Who did he think he was, getting in her head like this? She stopped abruptly, thumping her fist against the nearest bulkhead. Bad idea. Yelping as a bolt of pain lanced through her hand, she blinked back stars and flexed her fingers gingerly. Nothing broken, near as she could tell. Still, she was glad no one was around to witness that little outburst. The last thing she needed was to have to explain why she was violently assaulting the ship at the risk of her own ability to do her duty when called upon.
Ohana took a deep breath. She needed to think this through. What had tromping through the halls and lashing out at bulkheads done for her lately? Nothing good, that was for damn sure. Hell, she wasn’t entirely sure the pain in her hand was just superficial. So, no more letting her emotions run roughshod. There. That settled that.
Without the fog of emotion clouding her thought process, the solution was as obvious as the nose on her face.
She would go to Marshal Harm, she decided. She would explain everything. That her affair with Dell had continued after her enlistment. That it had come to a dangerous head. That, as a result, she could no longer fly as part of his wing. She would request a transfer to Rishi’s wing, or Green or Blue Wing. Surely he would understand the conflict posed by her commanding officer declaring his love for her. Maybe they could look the other way for a casual fling like Alexia suggested, but this was a whole other animal. Probably they would both be the subject of some kind of punitive action. Not a great way to start her career with the Irregulars, earning a black mark for sleeping with her commanding officer, but if that was the price she had to pay to clean the slate, then so be it.
Determined, she started off toward the command module to find Marshal Harm. Except that with every step forward the fog seeped back into her head.
How the hell could he even love her, anyway? She wasn’t exactly the lovable type. Besides, they’d barely known each other all of a minute. Didn’t he understand the concept of friends with benefits? Two ships passing in the night? No, of course not, she reminded herself. And speaking of, what kind of child falls in love with the first girl to show him a good time, anyway? She scoffed at the very notion.
The whole thing was utterly ridiculous, she concluded.
Just like your reaction, a tiny voice chided her from inside her own head.
She tried to ignore it, to dismiss it, but the more she did, the more it gnawed at her. The voice was right. It was embarrassing, looking back on it. Lord, had she really covered her ears? She may as well have hummed loudly and declared “I can’t hear you!” for crying out loud. And the things she said to him. She shook her head, ashamed at the way she treated him.
Dell deserves better than that and you know it.
The thought-voice wilted her nerve. She found her feet rooted to the floor, suddenly unwilling to carry her forward. Dell wasn’t a fool or a child or a bastard or a son of a bitch. He was a good man. A great man, even. Together they were doing something important, exciting. Something they could be proud of. Besides, they were combat pilots. Not exactly a long-lived species even under the best of circumstances.
And he loved her.
The feeling that flared through her as that revelation finally hit home was about the exact opposite of miserable. It was pretty fantastic, actually.
She smiled. Then frowned. Then smiled again in spite of herself.
This time she punched herself in the thigh instead of the bulkhead.
“Damn you, Dell DeCoud.”
She was just heading back to his quarters when the klaxons started wailing.
“Battle stations!” the voice straining to be heard over the klaxons repeated via the address system. “This is not a drill, repeat, not a drill! All personnel, report to battle stations!”
Ohana’s boots sang out beneath her as she barreled down the corridor toward the flight deck. It wasn’t long before others joined to form a chorus. The deck was already a hive of activity as the NCOs directed traffic, telling the deck rats which birds to ready in what order. She ignored them all for the time being, making a beeline for the unisex locker room. Swinging her locker open, she ripped the flight suit from the rack within and shimmied into it. One of the pilots on her flight, Eggers, helped her secure some of the more difficult-to-reach clasps and restraints that needed to be affixed to achieve pressurization. She did the same for him. Then they spot-checked each other for any tears or abrasions to their suits. Some people insisted it was an unnecessary step, that a suit with a tear wouldn’t pressurize to begin with, but Ohana knew better. She had seen what can happen when an abrasion opens up in zero atmosphere.
She didn’t want to ever see it again, let alone be on the wrong end of it.
Properly suited, her and Eggers hurried along with several others to their Banshees. Along the way she caught a glimpse of Dell. He nodded over at her. At least, she thought the gesture was directed at her. Everything around them was moving so frenetically. In any case, he looked like he was all business, and that was good. Whatever needed to be said could wait until afterward.
That is, if there was an afterward.
“Got your bird primed and ready to go,” Alexia said as she rolled the steps up to the side of Ohana’s Banshee. Hiking up the steps quickly, Ohana dropped herself into the cockpit and snatched up the helmet already waiting for her. “Good hunting, Wingman!” was the last thing she heard as she dropped it on her head and snapped it in place over the magnetic collar. As soon as it sealed, the suit immediately began to pressurize itself. She gave Alexia a grave thumbs-up. Within thirty seconds she was good to go.
Dell’s voice sounded over Red Wing’s private channel. “Alright, ladies and gentlemen, word from Marshal Harm is these are the same motherfuckers who ambushed us at Eden Prime. Only this time we’re fully armed, so how about we go out there and show them what Red Wing is really made of?”
A chorus of variously explicit confirmations filled their private channel. Ohana felt that thrill, that expectation start to prickle her skin.
“That’s the spirit. I want you all to remember one last thing, though. Today is the day. Today is the day we rain holy hell down upon the people who torched Drusilla’s wing. You understand me? Today we bring the heat for each and every one of them! They’re with us now, they’re hungry, and they will not be denied! They want blood! So let’s go give it to them!”
Damn if he isn’t a natural leader, Ohana thought in the last few seconds before they launched. She was ready to take on the entire enemy fleet herself.
Judging by the response over the comm, she wasn’t the only one.
From the control tower, the booth signaled imminent launch. Red… yellow…
“Here we go, people. Good hunting! Red Wing brings the heat.”
Green.
Ohana braced herself as her Banshee rocketed forward. Propelled into the fray via magnetic track with the rest of Red Wing, she was ready to maneuver and chart courses the moment she entered open space.
“Alright, people,” the voice of Marshal Harm squawked over the comm. “Contact in approximately one minute. You know the drill: clear a path for the follow-on wings to introduce the big boys to our cap killers.”
Ohana grinned at the thought. She had a couple of the so-called “capital killer” mis
siles of her own to contribute when the time came.
“All wings, weapons free on my mark,” Harm declared. “Thirty seconds… twenty… mark!”
The two opposing flights of fighters collided seconds later in a frenzied, kinetic exchange of fire. With so little time for either side to fix firing solutions, there were few if any direct hits among the opening volleys. It was in those chaotic moments after the initial burst that the outcome of the battle would ultimately be decided, Ohana knew. If they could gain the upper hand early, use their superior tech and training to moot their enemies’ numerical advantage, they would carry the day.
If they couldn’t…
She pushed the thought aside and pulled her flight in tight, tearing ass after twice as many of the Tyroshi fighters. Sluggish and unwieldy, the enemy never stood a chance. Ohana and her Banshees swooped in and shredded them like tissue paper, eliciting a whooping war cry from more than one of her pilots.
“Focus up, people! We’re just getting started.”
About a klick ahead, Dell and his flight went streaking by in hot pursuit of another group of Tyroshi fighters. They were giving good chase owing to that superior engine tech; she had no doubt Red Leader and his boys would run them down quickly enough. Instead she directed her fighters to form up and assist Red 13’s flight with a larger, slightly more troublesome knot of enemy craft. Even outnumbered more than two-to-one, the combined might of the two flights made short work of the outdated, technologically inferior fighters.
“Enemy attrition rates at sixty-plus percent,” Harm announced over the general comm. “Launching Blue Wing.”
Something was wrong, Ohana realized. Everything was happening too quickly. It shouldn’t have been so easy, even with the advantage the Banshees gave them.
“Launching Green Wing.”
This isn’t a battle, she thought. This is a massacre.
And then it hit her. What was missing. What she should have noticed right away if she’d been looking at the big picture.
She switched to a private channel, trying not to sound so suddenly panicked. “Marshal Harm, how many Morgenthau-Hale signatures are you reading on scan?”
“Negative, Red Seven. No M-H signatures on scan.”
“It’s a trap!” she called over the general comm. “Protect the fleet! Protect the fleet!”
“Dervish! Dervish! Dervish!” Dell barked, signaling for a tactical retreat without question. She was the undisputed expert on Morgenthau-Hale tactics, after all. For all the good it had done them.
The ultra maneuverable Banshee flipped axis over axis at her command, barely registering any loss of momentum as Red and Gold Wings abandoned their attack course and went streaking back toward their own fleet. It was a desperate, hopeless mad dash and she knew it.
Even the screams of all their Banshees combined couldn’t stop what was coming.
Her heart caught in her throat a moment later when the Morgenthau-Hale Battle Group Vanguard jumped into the fray, its multiple batteries of heavy rail guns pummeling Liberator from mere klicks away.
43 • DEFIANCE
“Sir? Are you alright, Major Wilkes?”
Fenton’s head rang like church bells in full revelry. Swooning, he raised himself up off the floor. Touched his forehead. Blood. There was blood on his fingers.
“What happened?” And yet, as soon as he asked, he remembered. He and a few of his young assistants had been burning the midnight oil. Even after the successful retroforming of Shih’ra, there was still so much to do and explore.
That is, until the bombardment began.
“I’m here, I’m okay,” he said, shrugging Banks off and heading for the door.
A clutch of emergency personnel wielding fire extinguishers raced past a group of technicians fleeing in the opposite direction. Several of the fleeing were being assisted by their comrades, their engineering coveralls torn and blackened. Fenton stopped a woman trailing behind them. The sleeve of her coveralls was shredded and bloodied down to the elbow and she was holding her upper arm tightly but at least she was moving under her own power.
“What’s going on?”
“Sneak attack, sir,” the woman said breathlessly. “Morgenthau-Hale. Tyroshi lured the wings out, then the sons of bitches jumped in right on top of us!” A fresh series of blasts rocked the deck beneath their feet and she grimaced. “Sir, my arm. I have to—”
“Go,” he said, waving her on. She didn’t need to be told twice. Back in the lab, Fenton found an anxious Banks and Hennah doing their best to comfort one another. “We’re under attack. It’s not looking good, apparently.” He was stating the obvious and then some, he realized, but Hennah had started hyperventilating nonetheless.
“Slowly,” Banks instructed. “You need to breathe slowly.”
Hennah nodded, swallowing, at least until another boom sounded from deep within the ship. She gasped again, a choked-off cry escaping her throat. In that moment, Fenton decided they couldn’t just stay put and wait to see how the battle concluded.
“We need to move, at least get closer to one of the escape pods if the ship starts to go up. Banks, can you help her?”
“Yes, sir. I think so.”
“Good. Get her on her feet and let’s get moving.”
It took a few seconds, but Banks managed to convince Hennah to stand and start putting one foot in front of the other. Soon they’d cleared nearly half the deck before Fenton suddenly remembered Roon. “Oh, god. I have to go back.”
“What? Sir, no—”
“I have to go back,” he repeated, turning and trying to push past Banks.
Another heavy blast rattled the decks.
Banks placed himself bodily in front of Fenton, trying to prevent him from doubling back down the corridor. “Sir, there’s no time!”
“Get out of my way, damnit!”
Just as Banks opened his mouth to object, a tremendous boom slapped the walls of the corridor. Fenton winced as the young man went rigid before him. The tiniest of sounds escaped his throat, followed immediately by a coughing spray of blood. All the life left his eyes as he dropped to the deck like his strings had been cut, revealing a trio of tactically armored Morgenthau-Hale Marines rapidly advancing on them. Hennah started to scream. One of the boarders put two bullets center mass into her chest and she crumpled against the bulkhead with a final, deflating grunt.
Fenton gasped, falling back upon his ass. In those final ignominious moments—streaked with his young assistant’s own blood and gore, scrabbling backward across the deck like some scuttling rodent—he was certain he was just moments from death. Somehow it all seemed so anticlimactic. There was no slideshow of his life’s highlights flashing before his eyes, no great truth realized at the last minute… nothing. Just empty, pointless struggle.
“It’s him,” the leader called from behind his balaclava. “Hold your fire!”
Fenton flinched as they moved to surround him. Somehow the realization they were searching for him specifically was even more terrifying than the prospect of imminent death.
Several concentrated bursts of choppier, higher caliber fire rang out as the boarders reached him. Fenton instinctively balled himself up tight. He drew his knees to his chin and covered his head in an effort to make himself as small as humanly possible while the bullets were still flying. When at last it finally stopped, he chanced a peek between his arms. The boarder who had identified him lay just feet away, an increasingly large pool of blood expanding from beneath his body.
Fenton was just starting to pick himself up off the deck when a familiar voice shouted for him to stay down.
“Torrey?”
“We’re here, Major, we’ve got you. You hit?” Three quick shots rang out as Torrey inspected him for wounds. Craning his head back, Fenton saw Breed covering them in a low crouch. “I need to know if you caught any of those rounds, sir. You feel anything? Where does it hurt?”
“My hip,” he groaned, “but I think it’s just from the fall. Left s
ide.”
Torrey probed Fenton’s hip tentatively. “How bad is it? Can you walk?”
“Think so,” he said as pain flared beneath Torrey’s touch. It wasn’t unbearable, though. The last thing he wanted was to be a burden in a full-blown, close-quarters firefight. “Yeah. Yeah, I can manage.”
“Good.” Torrey helped haul him to his feet.
“They were coming for me,” he said dazedly, steadying himself against the bulkhead.
“What?” Torrey snapped his fingers before Fenton’s face when he failed to respond. “You’re sure they were coming for you?”
Fenton looked at the dead leader. “He said ‘It’s him. Hold your fire.’ Then you shot the prick. Thanks for that, by the way. Owe you one.”
“Like hell, you do.” Pulling his sidearm, he reached for Fenton’s hand and clapped it into his palm. “Know how to use one of these?”
“Point and click?” He thumbed off the safety.
“Close enough. Now, c’mon, we need to lock you down before these assholes get too much of a foothold.”
“What about them?” he said, nodding to Banks and Hennah. As if he had to ask.
“Dead.”
“And Roon—”
“No idea. I promise you, as soon as we get you somewhere safe I will go and find her myself if I have to.”
Fenton nearly leapt out of his boots as Breed loosed another burst of fire down the corridor. “Right, right. Okay, let’s go.”
“That’s the spirit.” Clapping Fenton on the shoulder, he turned and called, “Breed! Moving out!”
“Got you covered!”
No sooner did he say so than a trio of boarders popped around the corner, spraying the corridor with fire. Torrey managed to pull Fenton into a shallow alcove just in time, even as Breed caught a ricocheting round that knocked him off his feet. Without thinking Fenton leaned out, sending several shots back the way the first had come. Torrey used the covering fire to grab the canvas loop on the back of Breed’s vest and haul him into the safety of the alcove with them. “Where’d it catch you?”
The Lazarus Particle Page 34